


Dusk in the Market Square

by sophinisba



Series: summerpornathon 2011 [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Community: summerpornathon, Humiliation, Interrogation, M/M, Non Consensual, Public Nudity, Public Sex, Punishment, Team Gluttony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-02
Updated: 2011-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-20 23:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aredian puts Merlin in the stocks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dusk in the Market Square

**Author's Note:**

> Written the Kink Grab Bag challenge at summerpornathon and the "humiliation (in public)" square on my kink_bingo card.

Merlin had been in this position before. The pressure at his throat and his wrists was familiar, as was the growing ache in his back and his arms. He knew this shuttered view of the market, the weird angle with his head forced down, trying to judge from the movement of people's feet whether they were about to throw another object he couldn't dodge. He knew the feel of rotten fruit smacking and sticking against his face, and that sting in his eye that he couldn't rub away.

It was different this time because Aredian had sent the children home. Instead of their squeals he heard the broad, low laughter of women and men. When they threw they hit harder than the children, and they weren't aiming only at his face.

It was different because earlier, as soon as they reached the platform, Aredian had ordered him to strip, and when Merlin could only stop and stare, the guards began to shake him and then to tug at his clothes.

"All right, all right, I'll do it," he'd shouted, and had pulled off his shirt and his breeches before he realised he'd already given in to the Witchfinder's wishes, before the interrogation had even begun.

"Everything, boy," Aredian said when Merlin was standing in his smallclothes on the platform in the market square. "Take off everything." And Merlin did.

So it was different, with the wooden planks under his bare feet. Different with the drying fruit and the cooling air of dusk on all his exposed flesh. And while in the past he'd always strained against the chokehold of the wood to look up, to see where the next blow was coming from, even to smile as winningly as he could at the children, tonight he stared at the ground, his mouth slack, face blank with humiliation and terror.

So when he'd been there for an hour and Aredian stood in front of him and lifted up the upper plank on its hinge, Merlin did not raise his head or stretch out his arms, despite the pain in his neck. Aredian cupped Merlin's chin and forced him to look up, into his serene eyes.

"Are you ready to tell me who did the magic?" he asked, gently rubbing at a new bruise on Merlin's cheek.

"I don't – " Merlin stuttered – "I don't know. I don't know anything."

Aredian smiled, grabbed Merlin by the hair, and pushed him back into position to leave him again at the mercy of the crowd.

The next time he didn't bother to release Merlin from the pillory but simply walked up behind him and started smoothing his hands over Merlin's bent back, then down to his buttocks, rubbing a thumb into his crack while the people jeered.

"I believe," he said, low enough that only Merlin could hear, "if you were sorcerer yourself, you'd have found a way out of this."

"So why keep punishing me?" Merlin choked out, confused.

Aredian stepped closer, pressed against him so Merlin could feel the bulge in his trousers while he reached around to take hold of Merlin's prick.

"A _name_ , Merlin. That's all I ask."

Merlin could only gasp as Aredian pulled at him roughly. He didn't think he'd been hard, but now he could feel himself firming in the man's grip. He wanted to be sick.

"Look at him, he likes it!" someone shouted, and Merlin tried not to connect the voice with the woman who sold him honey in the market. He really did not recognise the male voice that added, "The little whore."

"I will not give this to you," Merlin said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, Merlin, you will give whatever I ask, in time."

Merlin did his best to hold back. He bit his tongue and kept his mind as far as he could from the names of his friends. He would be a laughing stock if he needed to, a thing, a body in Aredian's hands, but nothing more. Not a sorcerer and never, never a traitor.

When Arthur stormed into the market to demand that _his_ manservant be released, Merlin still hadn't surrendered a name.

But he'd given up his dignity, and the crowd roared as the prisoner spilled his seed in the pillory square.

He kept his eyes on the ground as Arthur let him go.


End file.
